eponym
noun

- the name of an object or activity that is also the name of the person who first produced the object or did the activity

The Cambridge Dictionary

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ORIGIN

The word "eponym" comes from the Greek eponymos, which means "giving one's name to". It is formed from the Greek elements epi- meaning "upon" and -onym meaning "name".

An eponym is therefore something or someone that has given their name to something else, like a place, an era, an invention, or other item. For example, the sandwich is an eponym named after the 4th Earl of Sandwich.

The word "eponym" entered English in the mid-1700s, derived from its Greek roots. Its use grew in the 1800s as scholars studied the origins of words and names.

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AN A-TO-Z OF EPONYMS

Achilles’ heel, Boolean logic, Bowie knife, Caesarian section, Cartesian dualism, Darwinism, Diesel engine, Disneyland, Draconian laws, Edwardian furniture, Elizabethan era, Euclidian geometry, Freudian slip, Georgian architecture, Heisenberg uncertainty principle, Herculean task, Ionian school, Jacobian matrix, Kelvin scale, Leninism, Maoism, Maslow's hierarchy, Mercurial attitude, Morse code,Murphy’s Law, Newtonian physics, Obamacare, Ohm’s Law, Oedipus complex, Pandora’s box, Pavlovian response, Pyrrhic victory, Queensland, Quixotic, Reaganomics, Stalinism, Tesla cars, Trumpism, Platonic love, Procrustean bed, Rube Goldberg machine, Sisyphean task, Skinnerian conditioning, Socratic method, Turing test, Uranium, Volt, Van Allen radiation belts, Watt, Windsor knot, Xerox, Yale University, Zeppelin

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SYNONYMS

alias, appellation, byname, call name, cognomen, denomination, designation, diminutive, dub, EPONYM, epithet, handle, label, moniker, name, namesake, nom de guerre (de plume), pet name, pseudonym, sobriquet, stage name, title, appellative, brand, byname, designation, given name, nickname, pseudonym, the known as (named, so-called), used name

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation, say something like:

“I wonder how many people are aware that the word ‘sandwich’ is an EPONYM derived from John Montague*, the 4th Earl of Sandwich.”

*John Montague (1718-1792), the 4th Earl of Sandwich in England, would ask his servants to bring him slices of meat between two slices of bread, a habit well known among his gambling friends. Other people, according to this account, began to order "the same as Sandwich!", and thus the "sandwich" was born.

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